


that which belongs to the returned

by sevenfoxes



Category: Savages (2012), Savages Series - Don Winslow
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:49:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it goes:</p><p>O meets Chon.</p><p>Chon meets Ben.</p><p>Ben meets O.</p><p>The first happens nearly fifteen years before the second, but the third only happens about eighteen months after the second.  The difference to Chon, however, is negligible.  He's known O since she was Ophelia and he was Johnny, since she was a little girl, her bare skin free of ink and her hair free of dye.  Chon's only known Ben for about seven years, but he's always been Ben, steady reliable Ben, a counterbalance to the beautiful fucking chaos that is O.  So yes, he's known O longer...</p><p>But he'd kill for both.</p><p>(He's killed for both.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	that which belongs to the returned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gala_apples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/gifts).



> This is based on the book version rather than the movie (as it seems we both prefer the book). While this is set pre-Savages, I haven't read a sentence of The Kings of Cool, so it's probably incredibly divergent from the canon in that book. Hope this is in line with what you were hoping for. Happy holidays :)

1.  
  
_Fuck you._

 

 

 

  
  
2.  
  
This is how Chon starts all his stories.  So this seems like a good place to start.    
  
_Fuck you_ , he'll say sharply, pausing a moment before continuing on to whatever it is that he actually has to say, which usually isn't a hell of a lot.  
  
O thinks that it's his way of saying, _Are you paying attention?_  The baditude has made him a brutally efficient - yet elegant - linguist.  He likes to tell his stories out of order, backwards.  Make you work for it.  And Chon does not like to repeat himself.  
  
So listen closely, because he's only going to tell you this once.

 

 

 

 

3.  
  
This is how it goes:  
  
O meets Chon.  
  
Chon meets Ben.  
  
Ben meets O.  
  
The first happens nearly fifteen years before the second, but the third only happens about eighteen months after the second.  The difference to Chon, however, is negligible.  He's known O since she was Ophelia and he was Johnny, since she was a little girl, her bare skin free of ink and her hair free of dye.  Chon's only known Ben for about seven years, but he's always been Ben, steady reliable Ben, a counterbalance to the beautiful fucking chaos that is O.  So yes, he's known O longer...  
  
But he'd kill for both.  
  
(He's killed for both.)

 

 

 

 

  
4\.    
  
The problem with the above equation, however, is that it makes it seem as though Chon is the anchor that holds them together, that he is the center around which they rotate.  
  
But it's always been O.  
  
(On this, Ben and Chon silently agree.  She's the most scattered of the three, a bit aimless, but her gravity is strong.  She's good at giving each what they need, good at helping them give each other what they need.  She knows it instantly and without question.  She is beautiful and giving, selfless in a way that even she doesn't recognize.  This is why they love her.)

(Ben loves Chon because he's always wanted an older brother, because he knows that whatever happens, Chon will have his back. Because Chon might hurt (kill) people, but he has principles, a guiding compass that drives him to protect the people and things that he cares about, and Ben respects the shit out of that.  Chon might not think he's a good man, but he is.)

(Chon loves Ben because he makes him feel safe, too.  Like O.  Loved.  He will never - NEVER - tell this to either of them.  Ever.  Fuck that emotional psychobabble bullshit.)

 

   
   
 

 

  
5.  
  
The first thing you need to know is that O never feels sorry for herself.  This is important for understanding what comes next.  O doesn't feel sorry for herself because she's spent years watching Paqu moan endlessly upon the injustices and difficulties of her life, from the inconsiderate waiter who forgets that she wants her fat-free, taste-free raspberry vinaigrette on the side to the fact that her own mother never really paid attention to her, and isn't O just so lucky to have a mother that truly cares about her?  
  
(The fact that that little pearl of insight came as her mother sipped a watery martini on the patio next to the pool in their backyard and managed to completely miss the total fucking shiner that O was sporting under her left eye was only slightly amusing.  It had been Carrie Anne that popped her one, that self-righteous little bitch, but O had gotten her own chunk of flesh in that schoolyard squabble.)  
  
So, nope.  O doesn't feel sorry for herself.  In the grand scheme of things, O has it lucky.  
  
The thing is...  
  
O is always being left behind.  
  
She's spent the majority of her life watching the people in her life disappear, leave her.  No, she's not being dramatic.  It's just a fact of life.  She has adapted, like those reptiles that change sexes in a single sex environment (or whatever - she never really paid attention in bio).  She has gotten used to expecting temporary, to not expecting much of anything.  
  
While Chon's father was a mean son of a bitch, O's simply wasn't there.  
  
(This is why she doesn't feel bad for herself.  There are seriously worse things than having no one, and while she only met John Sr. a few times before he went to prison, that was enough to convince her.)  
  
The stepfathers weren't much better, an endless stream of useless men who rotated in and out of her life in a blur.  By the time she was eight, she barely noticed them, simply the trees that zip by your window on a long drive in the car.  
  
She's not sure her mother was ever really there in the first place.  
  
But whatever.  O has amazing, loyal friends in high school, a long line of boys to fuck and throw away as it suits her.  And she has Chon.  
  
Chon.  Chon is _hers._  
  
So the first time that Chon fucks off to the middle of nowhere to go kill people for Uncle Sam, it hurts.  Not that she lets him know.  He ships off with the SEALs and she drives all the way to The Grove and maxes out Three's credit card.  Paqu is too busy watching some Barbara Walters special to listen to the fucking reaming he gives her when he gets the bill.  O enjoys annoying him almost as much as spending the money.  
  
(She uses part of that money to fund her first tattoo.  So she blames Chon for that little addiction.)  
  
And then Ben.  Ben with his bleeding heart and anxious feet.  Always disappearing to fix the world's ills as if it's his penance for operating in a world that requires violence on his behalf (though not at his hands).  Only he's fucking _Jewish_.  O's heard about the whole guilt thing, but seriously.  And penance for what, she's not sure.  Ben knows that the life that they lead comes with costs, that when Chon comes back with a gun that's warm or blood in the cuff of his leather jacket it is a direct result of their chosen line of work.  But he's not hurting people that don't deserve it, that don't bring it on themselves.    
  
So yeah.  Ben plays Mr. Fix-It to assuage some guilt.  But that's okay.  O's proud of him.  She misses him, worries about him, but she knows this is all a part of what makes Ben _Ben_ , what keeps him sane and grounded and the beautiful little Baddhist-Jew she loves.  
  
At least by the time Ben rolls into her life, Chon has finally given up the soldier of fortune bullshit.  Enough skulls to crack in SoCal thanks to Ben.  
  
It's not that they didn't want her to go with them.  Okay. granted, Chon wasn't exactly going to have her ship out to fucking Stanland or I Rock-n-Roll with him, but Ben is always trying to get her to go on his adventures around the globe playing Captain Planet.  But that isn't what makes her O.  Honestly, she's still trying to figure that out.  So until then, she'll let Ben run off to the jungle, let Chon run back to the desert if that's where he needs to be.  
  
And that's why she loves them, she thinks.  They leave.  But they always come back.  
  
Her boys always come back to her.

 

 

 

 

  
6.  
  
(And god, she's so, so scared of being without them, though she'd rather have a fucking limb hacked off with an axe than admit it, even to herself.  Chon and Ben are the only people she's ever let in close enough to make her feel that fear she used to experience as a young child, this constant thrum of worry of abandonment that she eventually learned how to tame by walking into the knife enough times.  Like spiking your coffee with arsenic, trying to build a resistance to it.  
  
It never really works.  It only kills you slowly.)

 

 

 

 

  
7.  
  
Ben's seen her before.  
  
She comes to some of the volleyball games that Chon plays, thought she rarely sticks around to watch the entire game.  She usually squats on the beach for twenty or thirty minutes in big Olsen Twinesque sunglasses, then wanders away.  
  
O isn't exactly the type of girl that Ben imagined Chon would go for, though, to be fair, Ben doesn't know Chon very well at first.  Chon is the cards-close-to-the-chest sort, which suits Ben just fine.  They first meet extremely briefly in high school, shortly before Chon ends up dropping out - at a volleyball match between their schools, funnily enough.  (He only learns later that it was assigned punishment for Chon from the powers that be - playing on the volleyball team as though it would keep a kid like Chon out of trouble.)  
  
Anyway, he meets up with Chon again after his first tour, a random run-in at the beach that results in them teaming up pretty constanty for matches when Chon isn't overseas.  He really likes Chon, if only because he rarely, if ever, gets pissed when Ben starting drumming his little Berkley heart out about fucking George Bush and his bullshit wars because Ben can't help himself.  It's like Chon knows and accepts this even though a few years ago, Chon would have probably considered him some dickless hippie bleeding heart (probably did and maybe still does?  Either way, he treats Ben like a brother despite their ideolgoical differences).  In fact, Ben is pretty sure that Chon doesn't care for these wars either.  Chon doesn't seem to care for much at all outside of volleyball and dope.

Except... this girl.  
  
He always imagined Chon with some big breasted just-smart-enough-to-not-be-annoying SoCal type who wouldn't ask questions or be clingy, not this short, tattooed, skinny albeit pretty girl.  
  
But hey.  To each their own.  
  
Then he meets O.

(Like getting suckerpunched in the face and loving it.  It reminds him of the first time he met Chon, too.)

 

 

  

   
8.  
  
The first time Chon meets O, she's five and goes by Ophelia.  
  
She's wearing some hideous floral pink dress that doesn't quite come down to her knees, revealing some seriously skinned skin over the bone.  She's skinny as a rake, short, and has a spectacularly ugly haircut.  
  
He really doesn't remember much (because he's six, and who remembers dick all from when they're six?), but he does remember this:  
  
Some kid (Barry Levinson, who later becomes an entertainment lawyer best known for his billboards on Sunset and jumping out the window of his office on the 32nd floor of a downtown tower after putting a chair through it) makes a crack about Ophelia's hair.  
  
For a moment, Ophelia looks like she is about to cry.  
  
(He can remember that part even now.  O almost never cries.  Ben cries like a fucking baby, especially when he's watching some bullshit movie or television show - or god forbid, one of those awful tv fundraiser spots where they show sad looking dogs that were rescued from some mental hoarder or skinhead.  WATERWORKS.)  
  
The next moment, that kid's fucking face is in the dirt and Ophelia is on his back, pounding the shit out of it with her little fists.  
  
If Chon is being honest with himself, that's the moment he first fell in love with O a bit.  He just didn't know it until later.  
  
(See, Chon never tells his stories in order.  He's a man who believes in retrospective.)

 

 

 

  
9.  
  
The first time O really meets Ben, she turns to face Chon and says, "Are you fucking serious?"  
  
She's standing in the guts of their first growhouse and Chon has just finished explaining what they've been up to for the past few months.  Chon shrugs nonchalantly, silent, and her mouth twists into a half-smile.  "He looks like a _mormon._ "  Then: "But with better hair."  
  
"Jew," Ben says, and he isn't sure if he should be insulted, but he can't help but be incredibly amused.  She's small and thin as shit, but she takes up so much room.   _She has beautiful wrists_ , he finds himself thinking out of the blue.  
  
"Same thing."  
  
This time, Chon laughs and shakes his head.  It's a rare thing... Chon laughing.  Ben likes the sound of it.  He's been perpetually moody since the last time he came back from Afghanistan, though he won't talk about it, and it's nice to see him loosening up a bit again.  When Chon is tense, Ben is tense, and when Ben is tense, shit just does not operate well.  And... Ben just likes to see Chon happy and loose.  
  
"I bet you're a fantastic lay, though," is the next thing she says.  When Ben's mouth hangs open for a moment, she continues.  "Oh, I have a thing for this.  Lay-dar, so to speak."  
  
(The non sequiturs are a real thing with O, Ben comes to learn.)  
  
They let her smoke a little of the new blend that Ben has been breeding, then they go to Taco Bell and she eats a metric shit-tonne of food.  
  
Yeah.  Ben finally understands why Chon is so hot on this girl.

 

 

 

  
10.  
  
O never asks where Chon disappeared to when he was ten.  One year he was ahead of her in school and the next, he was in her grade.  That's what happens when you miss a couple months of school because your father's partners decide to kidnap you and hold you for ransom, and the teachers loathe your existence enough to hold you back even though you're smart enough to move on to the next grade.    
  
(Chon has a fucking _spectacular_ ability to piss off authority, a skill he developed early.  He's still shocked as hell that he didn't end up with a court-martial by the time he was discharged.  HONORABLY.  Check that shit out.)  
  
Chon tells her one night when he's stoned out of his fucking gourd on some of the new shit that Ben's been cooking in the small growhouse down on Redondo.  He makes a mental note to tell Ben to cool it on CBDs because he feels like he's fucking melting into the couch.  
  
She's poking at the broken pinky he got crashing the ATV on his daredevil escape.  O listens without speaking, no look of pity on her face, just the same look she always has.  
  
(He has never told anyone this story before.   _No one._  He does not want platitudes or bullshit about how shitty his father was or how he was a brave kid.  He sat around for four months, ate fruit loops and watched bad tv.  He does not want to hear anything about it.)  
  
And O, beautiful fucking O, doesn't even miss a beat.  
  
She takes another hit and lets her head lull to the side until it touches the back of the couch.  "When I was ten, my mother signed me up for tap dancing for a year."  
  
Chon laughs.  His body feels like an echo.  
  
"That was the year she watched some stupid biography on Bobby Fisher and was sure that she had birthed some sort of prodigy, she simply needed to _unlock the potential_ or some fucking nonsense.  Thus began the year of tap, piano, chess, violin, and a whole whackload of other shit I had absolutely no talent in."  
  
She sniffs.  The drugs don't seem to be affecting her as much, but she's never been particularly sensitive to the heavy indica.  In fact, he knows she doesn't really like it much at all (mostly because it doesn't do much for her, but also because she's likes to fuck high, and sativas are so much better for that), but it's the only shit he's got in the place, so she takes what she can get.  
  
"I threw the shoes in the pool after the third lesson.  That was some Gene Kelly bullshit."  
  
O climbs onto his lap, her slim thighs bracketing his hips.  And oh, it doesn't matter that this shit is _loooow_ , O knows how to crank him up like he's rocking some pure sativa dope.  
  
"So you're not a secret savant?" Chon asks, reaching around to grab her ass a little roughly.  She likes it that way.  She's only wearing panties and he can feel how incredibly wet she is through their combined layers of fabric.  O's rubbing herself off on him a bit, grinding down enough for him to feel it.  
  
"Nah, I'm a fucking _genius_ at this," she says, slipping her hand into his boardshorts.

 

 

 

  
11.  
  
So here's the thing about being in a warzone:  
  
You eat together, you piss together, you shit together, you sleep together, you wake together, you travel together, you jerk off together.  Chon has watched a man shit himself in fear as insurgents moved past the forward position.  He's seen a man be wrestled to the ground so members of his division could wrench away the gun he put to his own head.  
  
There's a reason so many dudes stick up titty calendars when they actually have walls to their bunks or stash Playboys in their packs.  Chon has never fucking cared about appearances, and none any less than when he's being fucking shot at or blown up every day.  When you've held a man's insides in your hands as he bleeds out on your lap, you really don't fucking care what people think about you.  You don't care about the body attached to the hand that's jerking you off or who's fucking holding you when you finally break the fuck down.  
  
And that's all that Chon has to fucking say about that.

  

 

 

 

  
12.5.  
  
The first time O fucks Ben, she officially GETS. IT.  Exclamation point.  
  
They probably hear her come in Japan.  Godzilla attack, motherfuckers.  
  
(She knows.  She knows then where this is going.  Why Chon loves Ben as much as he does, but won't say it (he's as emotionally repressed as Ben is liberated).  A yin to his yang.)  
  
Ben is warm where Chon is cold, soft where he is sharp.  Not better or worse.  In fact, the same high, just different.  Both fucking amazing.  
  
Like indica and sativa.  High and low, same smooth fucking orgasm.  Perfect perfect _perfect_.  
  
(Her lay-dar was dead on the money.  The pussy knows, okay?)

 

 

 

 

   
12.  
  
"So... O," Ben says nonchalantly. Or as nonchalantly as Ben can get.  Ben has the worst pokerface Chon has ever seen in his _life_.  Ben wears everything on his face like a big blinking light and while Chon has grown to find this endearing, it is not helpful in their line of work.  He's been trying to break Ben of it for months.  
  
"Yes..." Chon stretches out the word so it sounds as ridiculous as this conversation should be.  Chon knows exactly what Ben is after, exactly which waters he is testing, but he thinks he's going to make Ben say it.  
  
Finally, he takes pity.  Mostly because he's tired and hungry, and their joint is almost finished.  
  
"She's been trying to fuck you for two weeks, dude."  He takes a toke, stubbing out what's left of the cherry in the small crab-shaped ashtray they brought out on the deck.  Ben doesn't like throwing shit into the ocean.  "I don't want to hear about it from her anymore.  Just do it.  You won't regret it."  
  
"But-"  
  
Chon sighs, shaking his head.  He knows where this is going.  The beer in his hand is sweating from the heat, the label peeling and sticking to his palm.  "Does she strike you like a girl that _belongs_ to anyone?  I can tell you right now that she would not appreciate this conversation, bud."  
  
Chon understands, though.  It's Ben.  Ben being the stand-up dude, Ben making sure that whatever he's about to do, about to take, that it isn't going to hurt Chon.  Or hurt O.  
  
(And this, my friends, is when Chon _really_ Gets. It.)

 

 

 

 

13.

_F U C K   Y O U_

_  
_ (Are you paying attention?  Because Chon wasn't.)

 

 

 

  

  
14.  
  
This is when it becomes Ben, Chon, and O.  BENCHONO.  
  
And it's good.  It's really, really good for a couple of years.

 

 

 

 

  
  
15.  
  
They're sitting on the balcony of Ben's pad.  The sunset is officially gorgeous.  
  
Ben's feeling anxious again.  It's been nearly nine months - long overdo for  another trip, another spin of the globe to see where he's headed to this time, who he's going to help to save his Baddhist soul, adjust his karma.  
  
Chon's been talking about the Baja Cartel lately.  To be honest, that shit fucking scares the crap out of O, mostly because she can tell that Chon is holding back.  His poker face has always been as good as Ben's is bad, but she known his tells.  She knows him too well, and he knows it.  
  
(But the look in his eye tells her that he wants to save Ben from this, at least for now.  She's never needed Chon to save her, but Ben is a tender soul.)  
  
"Where to this time?"  O asks.  
  
Ben leans into her.  "I was thinking the Congo.  Maybe."  
  
O lets out a put-upon sigh.  "Just watch out for the fucking malaria this time, okay?"  Ben laughs, and O slings an arm over Chon's shoulders.  
  
O knows that wherever Ben ends up next - the Congo or Nepal or any of the places she couldn't pick out on a map - he won't be back for a while.  So she tries to remember this moment, hold on to it for a little bit longer.  The feel of Chon's hand on her thigh and the warmth of Ben's body curled into hers, both of them alive and happy and beautiful.  
  
She's not worried, though.  
  
Her boys always come back to her.


End file.
